Jose Caravaca's "Distortion Theory"

Spanish UFO researcher Jose Antonio Caravaca enlightened me with this succinct explanation of his “Distortion Theory”:

According to my theory of distortion, [one will find] a direct and binding connection between the witness (his or her psyche) and their UFO experience (especially with close [UFO] encounters).

Knowing information from the parties [an external agent] "guess[es]" the other parties [the witnesses] elements (in a close UFO encounter) or vice versa. This shows that it is a phenomenon of "shared mental creation" between the human mind and unknown external agent.

Gestation process depends on the ability of [a] "creativity onieric" of each witness. A similar process of dreams, where logic [and] absurdity intermingle. Where the imaginative capacity of each witness, and information database (the unconscious) can enrich the content of [the] close encounter....

The bracketed material is mine, to help clarify Señor Caravaca’s points. (He allows me the honor to amplify his offerings as English is not his first language.)

As I understand the “theory,” an “external agent” (more on this in a moment) incorporates and interacts with a UFO witnesses unconscious thought processes and memories to create a scenario that has meaning of some kind.

Researchers then need to analyze that scenario to find the meaning.

Separating the materials from the witness’s unconscious that are his or her unique memories and thoughts comes first. Then a scrutiny of the “external agents” input has to be discerned, if one wants to understand the “message” being induced or proffered.

For me, the problem lies in the introduction of an “external agent.” What is the nature of that “agent”?

Where does it come from? Is it an archetype of the unconscious, à la Jung? Or is it an actual paranormal being or divinity that intrudes?

Or is it the intangible mental interaction, made manifest by the witness opening his or her mind (or being) to the foreign intruder?

That is, is the “external agent” created from the UFO witness’s opening his or herself to the dream content that Señor Caravaca says is present during the UFO encounter?

What is the purpose of the exchange; what is the message being provided?

Paul Kimball wrote this in a comment to the previous item here about Surrealism:

“ … our gods seem to fit our preconceptions as eras change, and my rejoinder that it could be the other way around, when we look at art it is the artists (i.e. the gods) who are always leading the way - the rest of us follow (the Beatles are a perfect example, but so is Picasso). 

Of course, the third option is that we're all doing it together. And therein lies the co-creative aspect.”

That strikes me as something similar to what Señor Caravaca is presenting.

So, we have a co-created scenario, whose meaning is not clear but important in some way.

Some transcendent way? Or just nonsense, to throw us off, as the Gnostics told us the demi-urgos (Yahweh) did to the Hebrews?

Jose clarifies further, per my request:

Dear Rich...

I think it might have some connection with the collective unconscious, but has some kind of independence, but also is parasitic.

I am convinced that the most prominent components of close encounters, those not found in other incidents, if we work hard and we find the psychological (in the unconscious of the witness) cause that occurs in the process of "SHARED MENTAL CREATION" by the process of the "CREATIVITY ONEIRIC.”

For example, in these three incidents (Cennina, Villares de Sanz and Macerata), the external agent uses the same concept, small craft and small humanoids, but each witness distorted the elements (provided by the external agent) with his own unconscious content.

One of the most important conclusions of my theory is that the witness is not independent or exclusionary or not a casual mere observer of experience; their participation is vital and can be found represented in the encounter (absurd details, exclusive elements, et cetera).

  

Some examples;

1. - UFO SHAPE. Tad Jones (West Virginia, 1967) observed UFO antennae, spherical metal

 legs and wheels = the witness works in an electronics store.

2. - STAR MAP. Betty Hill (1961) observed inside of an alleged alien craft star map = In the workplace the witness is a map very similar.

3. - SHAPED UFO. Juan Rodríguez Domínguez (Sevilla, Spain, 1977) keeping the estate of a soldier and is used to seeing a large bus carrying many people to his people = bus-shaped UFO with a multitude of crew, like military.

4. - REPAIR. Ms Marianne (New Berlin, New York, 1964) Repairmen aliens "spaceship" with the help of the crew of other artifact = When the witness lived on the farm of his father, watched the repair of machinery, sometimes helping neighbors.

5. - SYMBOL AND SHIP. Juan Gonzales Santos (Algeciras, Cadiz, Spain, 1981) observed a UFO as NASA space module with a swastika as insignia = Weeks before the witness had seen a documentary of the arrival of man on the moon and was an amateur the issues of the Second World War and specifically the German side.

6. - UFO SHAPE AND DRIVE. Pilots Captain Clarence S. Chiles, and co-pilot John B. Whitted (1948) = observed a UFO in elongated divided into sections such as aircraft and rockets of the time, and it is powered by flames.

Seven. - HUMANOIDE CLOTHES AND PROPULSION. Oskar Linke (East Germany, 1950)observed a UFO manned by humanoid dressed in coats and powered by flames = the witness thinks that it is a Soviet secret experiment.

JAC/RR 

The UFO mind-set: Surrealist Metaphors

Copyright 2013, InterAmerica, Inc.

Bruce Duensing and Paul Kimball think art and artists have an edge on reality and how art and artists think and perform provide clues to how non-artists may perceive things, such as when the non-artist spots a UFO, for instance.

That is, a UFO spotter may configure their observation in ways not unlike that of an artist, imaginatively and with weird elaboration, as found in some UFO accounts (like those of Jacques Vallee or Antonio Caravaca).

Here are twelve contemporary pieces of surreal art, art by artists extant today, not those who created and promoted surreal art or Dada of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s:

These are present day artists, who see things in odd ways, just as some UFO spotters see odd things in the sky and on the ground.

What are shown above are images from today’s cultural milieu, not the milieu of decades ago.

How and why UFO witnesses see the things they have reported to have seen reside in the present day social construct, not the Cold War or World War II anxieties that provoked such incidents as the Orson Welles’ 1938 Halloween War of the Worlds scare.

Still, my contention is that some visions by UFO spotters are neurological in nature, or the result of a psychological malfunction.

That artists also envisage reality in queer ways, without the concomitant neurological quirks shows that normality may be just diverse, and UFO spotters engage unusual things in ways like that of artists.

It’s a consideration.

Or are artists, such as those represented here, also subject to neurological mischief and create images created by that mischief?

The workings of the mind are still unclear in 2013; consciousness and unconsciousness are as mysterious to neurology and psychiatry today as it was over a hundred years ago.

UFO reports, while much less imaginative than the pictorial representations of artists, like those shown here, do have, nonetheless, elements of the same kind, put simpler and in ways verbal or oral, rather than painterly.

But the UFO accounts do smack of surreality.

And that is the crux of the UFO literature and lore: the reports are surreal.

Are they configured by mental aberrations? Or vivid imaginative imagery, sublimated from and by the extraordinary observation?

No one really knows…..

RR